That’s not to say that I’m running through the woods in the dark and screaming my head off. It’s not a panicked kind of lost, but more of a calm and collected attempt to find true North and get back on track.
To be honest, I’m glad for it.
For the longest time, I was grounded in religion. Christianity was what I thought defined me, which was technically true, but probably not in the way I had hoped.
I grew up believing much of the typical right-wing evangelical garbage that gets thrown around today. Even the stuff I didn’t fully believe had enough of a hold on me that I assumed I was being weak in my faith for questioning it. When I failed or screwed up, a small screw-up was enough to make me feel worthless, and a big one was enough to break me down almost completely.
I was the kind of Christian who held onto beliefs such as, “being gay is a choice and super sinful,” and “abortion is wrong no matter the reason.” I can imagine myself now saying “hate the sin, not the sinner”. Looking back, it’s all so cringe worthy.
My opinions started to slowly shift as I met different people and through my own humbling experiences, but the biggest changes came in the past couple years and was caused by one big, fat, amazingly beautiful occurrence.
Donald Trump’s run for and winning of the Presidency with a large evangelical endorsement.
Did I say beautiful? Sorry, I meant to say it was like getting hit by a freight train filled with shock and disgust.
If it had just been him rattling off horrible crap on TV, that would have been one thing, but seeing so many Christians I had respected and looked up to jump on the Trump bandwagon was a hard-enough jolt to knock me out of my complacency and leave me questioning everything I had ever thought I knew about myself, the world, and God.
Before Trump, I was more than willing to be the ignorant guy in the background, never making a splash and keeping my mouth shut.
After Trump, I found myself jumping into conversations I would have gladly kept out of before. I would argue for a change instead of bowing out to keep the peace, and found that I was having fun doing so.
I wound up in a place where I realized it wouldn’t be enough anymore to trust anything anyone else had told me. I was going to have to find out what I really believed on my own and through my own effort.
Luckily there were a precious few people who were greatly encouraging, who gave me a starting point, and let me run from there.
I’ve read more books in the last year of my life than I did the whole previous decade. I’ve branched out into subjects and authors that I would have completely disregarded before and enjoyed almost every one of them. I’ve read books of prominent atheists and religious outcasts, and even a right-wing book or two, though they left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve found that some of the thoughts I had discarded as foolish while surrounded by religion weren’t all that unheard of outside of that setting.
I haven’t yet managed to find the right path, but I’ve been able to mark off many that I now know for sure are not for me. Even some of the paths that haven’t been for me have been filled with enjoyment and learning. They were like stumbling upon a quiet oasis, even if just for a few hours.
I feel that I can confidently say that even if I remain lost for the rest of my life, that at least the searching has been worthwhile.
It’s not so bad being lost... it was far worse wrongly believing I knew where I was.
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This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit www.parrotcontent.com for more information.
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